


Wings Like Cobwebs

by seaofteeth



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Asexual Character, Asexuality, Fluff, Humor, Incubus Eren, M/M, Some raunchy language, Supernatural Elements, ace levi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-13
Updated: 2015-07-13
Packaged: 2018-04-09 02:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,659
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4329807
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seaofteeth/pseuds/seaofteeth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Eren is an incubus. Levi is asexual. They fall in love anyway.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Wings Like Cobwebs

**Author's Note:**

  * For [inkshaming](https://archiveofourown.org/users/inkshaming/gifts).



> This is a little detour from Trials & Tribulations, haha. Clearly, I was inspired by the handful of incubus-meets-ace prompts I've seen floating around on tumblr and I'd love to talk more about this 'verse so feel free to hit me up on tumblr (nachoheichou) with any questions, comments, etc! It makes me really happy to hear from you all.
> 
> Also, this is dedicated to my beta who is a gem and is also working on writing her own spin on the prompt... >:)

When Levi opens his eyes, there’s a boy with curled horns and sharp teeth grinning down at him, his unnaturally green eyes luminescent in the dark. He wonders, briefly, if he’s dreaming, but the sleep-addled suspicion is quelled when he realizes the weight on his hips is very real, heavy and warm and solid. The pointed tail slicing through the air is the final straw.

“What the hell!” Levi shouts, shoving the boy off him. The boy looks just as startled as he does, toppling over backwards off the bed with a loud yelp. Levi notices the black wings next, illuminated by the trickle of light emitted through his window from the street lamps outside; they jut out from between his shoulder blades and even folded, Levi can tell they’re likely twice or three times the length of the kid’s body. He balks.

“It’s not even _October_ ,” he says, ripping his blankets off in a fit of irritation. He has work tomorrow morning and the last thing he wants to do is drive some punk to the police station. He flips the switch on his bedside lamp and squints as his eyes adjust to the sudden light. Once he gets a good look at the kid in front of him, his frown deepens. “Aren’t you a little old to be playing pranks?”

The kid in front of him isn’t really a kid. At the very least, he’s eighteen, but he very well could be in his early twenties. It was the thin frame that threw him off originally but in the light, he can see defined abs and coarse, dark hairs trailing down to his pelvis.

Levi can also see that he’s completely naked.

He groans, running a hand down his face in disbelief. He really doesn’t want to deal with this.

“What’s your name, kid?” he asks, looking down at the boy who has yet to utter a single word in his own defense. He looks confused and more than a little annoyed, rubbing the hip he had landed on when Levi had thrown him off the bed. What right does he have to be annoyed? He’s the one who broke into Levi’s house wearing some kind of weird demon cosplay.

“My name is Eren,” the boy replies with a heavy tongue, as if he isn’t used to speaking the words. He probably isn’t; Levi can tell from the accent that English clearly isn’t his first language. Somehow, this makes the situation even worse. Is he some kind of foreign exchange student? Did someone take advantage of him, put him up to this?

He points at Levi accusingly. “You are Liam.”

“What? No,” Levi replies, his brow furrowing. “Levi. I’m Levi.”

Eren shakes his head, pointing again. “Liam.”

“I think I know my own name, thanks,” Levi deadpans, rolling his eyes. Then it dawns on him.

“Are you looking for _my neighbor_ , Liam?”

Eren frowns. “Liam. 3B. Likes to have sex with men.”

“This is 3A, dumbass,” Levi says, rubbing his temple. He could feel the inklings of a headache coming on. “And while Liam does like to have sex with men -- loudly, I might add -- I don’t like to have sex at all.” His eyes widen as he comes to a new realization.

“Did he hire a _prostitute_?” Levi asks aloud, mostly talking to himself at this point. “Is this some kind of weird kink of his? I’m going to kill --”

Eren grabs his arm, shaking his head. “Not prostitute.” His eyes are even brighter up close and Levi finds himself thinking he could get lost in them if he looks for too long. “Eren.”

“Yes, I know your name is Eren,” Levi sighs, gently prying his fingers off. He walks over to his dresser, rummaging around in the middle drawer until he finds an old pair of sweat pants and tosses them at Eren. “Here, put these on and I’ll drive you home. I don’t need them back. And quit it with the tail, it’s freaking me out.”

Eren holds up the pants between his thumb and pointer finger, looking utterly baffled. Levi watches as he sticks his arm in one leg hole and his head in the other, wiggling around, and he genuinely can’t tell if this kid is fucking with him or not. It’s half past three AM on a work night and there’s a naked man in his bedroom who has apparently never worn or even seen a pair of pants before.

“No, no, stop,” he says finally, pulling the sweats off Eren’s head. Eren’s hair is completely askew, sticking up in every direction and yet his horns somehow managed not to budge an inch. Jesus, did he super glue them to his head?

“Where do you live?” he asks and Eren looks at him quizzically, cocking his head to the side. “Your home,” he says helplessly, drawing an invisible house in the air with his fingers. “House. Place of dwelling.”

Eren’s eyes light up with recognition and he nods enthusiastically. _‘Finally, we’re getting somewhere,'_ Levi thinks to himself, and then Eren says a word that is most definitely not English and certainly not a city he’s ever heard of.

He puts his face in his hands and groans.

“I don’t suppose you would know how to spell that.”

Eren finally figures out how to put the sweats on after noticing how Levi is wearing his pajama bottoms and he snaps the waistband on his hips, beaming at him victoriously. The tail sticks out of the back, swishing like a cat’s. Eren is clearly pleased with himself and expects Levi to be too.

Levi is starting to realize that there’s a chance that tail isn’t fake. He doesn’t know what he is right now, but it isn’t pleased.

 

* * *

 

When Levi wakes up, he’s drooling on the arm of his couch. With a grimace, he wipes his mouth and looks at the clock on the wall. Work starts in thirty minutes and there’s no denying the fact he’s going to be late. He’s never late and he groans, weighing the pros and cons of calling in sick.

He hasn’t had a dream that vivid since childhood, but he supposes that’s what he gets for eating spicy nachos before bed.

Weirdly enough, though, he can’t find his old pair of sweats.

 

* * *

 

When Eren appears before him in a cloud of smoke not three days later, he chokes on the slice of pizza he’s eating and ends up having to perform the Heimlich maneuver on himself. Eren watches the whole time with wide eyes, looking confused but fascinated.

Levi can’t help but to notice he’s wearing the sweatpants.

 

* * *

 

The next time Eren appears, he comes prepared. He holds out a scrap of parchment and Levi hesitantly takes it, surprised to see English words scratched into the surface in thick, black ink.

“You wrote this?” he asks, and Eren shakes his head.

“Armin.”

Levi doesn’t know what an Armin is, but it has perfect penmanship.

“My name is Eren,” he reads aloud, glancing up at the figure in front of him. Eren smiles. “I am an incubus. I feed off the sexual energy of humans to survive. Please do not be afraid.”

Strangely enough, he’s not, but that’s probably because the incubus in question looks just so damn earnest.

“P.S. Sorry my English is poor.”

Levi snorts at that, setting the letter aside and crossing his arms. “So you’re an incubus.”

Eren nods, nearly knocking over a vase with one of his wings in his enthusiasm. They’re dark in hue but gossamer like cobwebs in the fall and Levi kind of wants to touch them just to see if they’re as fragile as they look.

“Hungry,” Eren says, interrupting Levi’s train of thought. His smile is feral, teeth glinting. “We have sex now.”

Levi blanches, waving his arms in front of him dismissively. “Sorry, but you’re barking up the wrong tree. I don’t have sex, remember?”

“Why?” Eren asks curiously, taking a step closer. “You like men, yes?”

“Romantically, yeah,” Levi replies, warily taking a step back. “Sexually, no.”

“Why?” Eren asks and Levi throws his hands up in exasperation, startling the incubus.

“I don’t know. Why is the sky blue? Why do you have wings?”

“To fly,” Eren replies, as if it were obvious.

Levi adds aspirin to his grocery list for the week.

 

* * *

 

Like clockwork, Eren appears in his house every three days. It stops being a shock after the first couple times and Levi decides that if they’re going to be spending this much time together, Eren should probably get better at communicating.

“Okay, what English _do_ you know?” Levi asks, flipping through the second grade workbook he borrowed from his cousin. It has spaces to practice the alphabet and a vocabulary list, so he figures it’s as good a place to start as any.

“Fuck me harder,” Eren replies in near-perfect English. Levi drops the book with a start. “Come in my –”

“Okay, I get it,” Levi cuts him off, his face red with embarrassment. Eren smiles expectantly, as if waiting for praise.

“Well, at least we know your pronunciation isn’t a _complete_ loss,” he sighs, leaning over to pick the book up off the floor.

 

* * *

 

Television proves to be an effective teaching tool. Eren learns almost all his colloquial English from the DVDs collecting dust on the shelves of his entertainment system or whatever’s on Levi’s DVR at the time.

He’s a fast learner, which is both a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because within a few months, Levi no longer has to resort to wild gesticulations in order for Eren to understand him. It’s a curse because Eren starts to work famous movie lines into their conversations – unironically.

When it’s time for him to leave, he looks Levi in the eye and says “hasta la vista, baby” with complete sincerity before disappearing in a flash of smoke.

Levi gives his copy of _The Terminator_ to Hange.

 

* * *

 

“How do you not know about human customs?” Levi asks one day, watching with thinly veiled amusement as Eren struggles to use his chopsticks. As it turns out, incubi can eat human food -- they just can’t survive off it.

“Iono,” Eren manages to say through a mouthful of lo mein. Levi makes a face and, taking the hint, Eren swallows before continuing. “They don’t teach us that in school.”

“There’s a school?” Levi says, arching an eyebrow.

“Well, yeah,” Eren replies, giving him the quintessential ‘duh’ look. Levi’s pretty sure he picked it up from _Clueless._ “How else would we know how to satisfy humans in order to feed off their energy?”

Levi can’t even imagine what the classes at Eren’s school were like, but he’s 100% sure he doesn’t want to.

“Actually, my first time in the human world was the night I met you,” the incubus says, chewing thoughtfully. “Jean must’ve purposefully assigned me a difficult human. I’m glad he did though.”

He grins at him and Levi almost can’t stand it; it’s like looking into the sun.

“What’s your world like?” Levi asks after a minute, pushing a stray piece of broccoli around his plate. He’s not hungry anymore; his stomach feels like it’s in knots and he chalks it up to too much Chinese food.

“Hot. Boring,” Eren shrugs. “The human world is much more interesting.”

He wonders if Eren just described Hell. It would make sense – Eren is, after all, essentially a demon. While he can’t imagine Eren hurting a fly, there’s no ignoring his unnaturally quick reflexes and pointed teeth – the teeth of a predator. He wouldn’t be surprised if Eren could bite through bone with those if he really wanted to. Despite this, Levi is not afraid.

“Why do you go back then?” Levi asks, his eyes flicking over Eren’s face. “If it’s so terrible.”

“Where else would I go?” he replies, looking down at Levi with his impossibly green eyes.

Levi doesn’t answer.

 

* * *

 

It’s Halloween and Eren is completely hyped up on sugar.

It’s the first time Levi has been able to spend time with him outside his house and Eren’s eyes are wide with wonder, pointing at jack o’ lanterns and fake skeletons hanging from trees. The air is crisp and the moon is full and the night feels like magic, somehow, but Levi can’t explain why.

Eren is shirtless despite the fact it’s below 60 °F, drawing the eyes of every single one of Levi’s neighbors. He gets numerous compliments on his ‘costume’ and he beams every time, grinning at Levi like they’re sharing a secret (they are.)

When he tries to run off after a cluster of costumed children, Levi grabs his hand.

“Oi, don’t go too far.”

Eren nods, still grinning, and their fingers don’t unlace until it’s time for Eren to go.

 

* * *

 

 

Winter comes. They watch _Frosty the Snowman_ and Eren insists on making his own. Under the cover of night, they trudge behind Levi’s apartment complex and construct something that _might_ be considered a snowman in an alternate universe. It’s lumpy and lopsided and Levi doesn’t have any carrots to use for a nose, but the snowman stays when Eren leaves and Levi spends more time than he’d like to admit looking out his window, their sad excuse for a snowman staring back at him.

 

* * *

 

He knows he’s not always Eren’s first stop in the human world. Sometimes he appears reeking of sweat and sex and Levi immediately points him in the direction of the bath. Sometimes he scrubs Eren down himself; he tells himself it’s because he’s not confident that the incubus will do a thorough job, but massaging shampoo into his hair is really just an excuse to play with his thick locks, trace his fingertips over Eren’s horns. Eren hums his approval as always, leaning into his touch and scooping bubbles up in his hands just to watch them pop.

Sometimes there are bruises and bite marks but they always heal within an hour or two, usually right before Levi’s eyes. The miasma of cologne remains, however, lipstick smudges on brown skin, and Levi always scrubs them off without a second thought.

Eren has to feed to survive and Levi doesn’t fault him for that, not even a little.

 

* * *

 

“You seem happier,” Hange says, leaning against their shared cubicle wall. “Did something happen? You meet someone?”

“Very funny,” Levi replies, taking a slow sip of his coffee before returning to the task at hand. The end of the quarter is coming up quicker than Levi would like and if he doesn’t finish these reports by the end of the day, he’ll probably need to come in over the weekend.

“You’re right,” Hange sighs, flopping down into their desk chair. “For you to meet someone, you’d actually have to leave your house for once.”

The corner of his mouth twitches.

 

* * *

 

“Do you love someone?” Eren asks in the middle of _The Notebook._ Normally he can’t stand romance movies, but Eren has exhausted his entire DVD collection and it’s the only thing on TV that isn’t an infomercial at this hour.

“Yeah, I think so,” Levi replies. His eyes don’t leave the screen and he fears Eren can hear his pulse, heart threatening to burst through his ribcage.

“Do I know them?” Eren continues, inching closer. Levi knows full well that he and Eren don’t have anyone in common, and he knows the incubus knows this too.

“Yeah.”

Eren is very close now and his next words are soft, barely louder than a whisper: “Is it me?”

Levi turns to look at him, his green eyes and gossamer wings and curled horns. His tail is swishing like it always has when Eren is excited or nervous, slicing through the air, swatting at nothing.

Levi kisses him and it’s like the first drop on a roller coaster -- Levi is falling, falling, falling.

“Stay,” he whispers.

And Eren does.


End file.
